


here i stand, in the light of day

by braille_upon_my_skin



Category: The Greatest Showman (2017)
Genre: Features strong usage of imagery from Greek mythology., M/M, This might be a touch pretentious and I apologize for that.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 12:51:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15863994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/braille_upon_my_skin/pseuds/braille_upon_my_skin
Summary: "Hades stole Persephone away," Phillip murmurs, "held her hostage. It's only when she left his world that spring arrived upon the Earth once more.""Who's to say that Hades can't leave the underworld to join Persephone on Earth?" Barnum counters. He inches closer, breath ghosting across Phillip's lips, light dancing in the whisky surface of his eyes. "The only thing stopping him is the walls he built for himself."





	here i stand, in the light of day

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a little something inspired by this [absolutely _gorgeous_ graphic](https://crown-of-the-circus-king.tumblr.com/post/174439185865/hades-x-persephone-au-barlyle-please-dont). It's not quite the AU said graphic so beautifully represents, but I tried my best to tie the symbolism into the world of canon.

 

 

His world of barriers like thorns, piercing and impenetrable, structures towering for miles overhead, prisms of stone stalagmites congesting the skyline, of shades on a spectrum from black to white with little variation in between, and misery that spreads, cloaks, and consumes in a rolling, murky fog, was never meant for trespass.

Color, vibrance, vitality, _life_ were never meant to encroach upon this world, wash over it in tides like a violent maelstrom, _touch_ it, teasingly and experimentally stroke it at the edges where the grays begin to blur and he can almost see what lies just beyond the mist.

Just out of reach.

There was never supposed to be a space in the thorns for a man, an embodiment of mirth, exuberance, animation and _freedom_ to slip through. To offer Phillip a hand and a means of escaping his world for something new, bright, sprawling and open and brimming with joy so tremendous and fecund it sinks into the landscape, enriching even the stone, brick, and concrete.

Hands weren't intended to close over Phillip's own, imbuing his skin with warmth that disperses throughout him to settle in the marrow of bones once cold and hollow.

Yet, hands, all the same, so rough and scarred yet gentler and stronger than any Phillip has ever felt, pull him close, a finger curling under his chin to tilt it up.

Eyes like whisky and honey, wheat gold flecked with shades of earthy green and blue fathoms warmer than the pale ice that stares lifelessly at Phillip from the mirror, eyes intense and searing, but soft like no pair Phillip has encountered before, roam over his face. And, they glow. Their heat inviting. Appreciative. _Adoring_.

 A match for the smile that graces a striking face, and the thumb that skims across Phillip's lower lip.

Phillip Carlyle regards Phineas Taylor Barnum with the same warmth. His heart pulses in his chest, blood buzzing and thrumming, running suddenly hot in anemic veins under ashen skin. Every diverging fork in spidery blue rivers rushes with fondness. Deepest admiration. Devotion. Phillip leans into Phineas's hand, and long-evasive happiness tugs at the corners of his mouth, turning them cautiously, timorously  upward. "Hades stole Persephone away," he murmurs, certain that the disruption of his world and the joy that came with it are undeserved, "held her hostage. It's only when she left his world that spring arrived upon the Earth once more."

Phillip did not take his Persephone. Barnum came to him willingly.

But, Phillip's place outside of the underworld, in the realm of the living, seems like a fantasy on the verge of dissolving. A misplaced stroke of luck that will soon recognize its error and retract its hand, snatching Phineas Barnum back through the gap in the thorns from which he appeared.

There is a clear segregation of shade from color. Enervation from Exuberance. They are opposites. They cannot coexist, or maintain a symbiotic relationship.

"Who's to say that Hades can't leave the underworld to join Persephone on Earth?" Barnum counters. He inches closer, breath ghosting across Phillip's lips, light dancing in the whisky surface of his eyes. "The only thing stopping him is the walls he built for himself."

Phillip was born among the dead, resided there for so long, he forgot how to live.

_Life_ is what Phineas breathes into him as their mouths meet, and Phillip crosses every line, wades through Styx and sheds the raiments of his entombment to race down the hole in the thorns. He absorbs color and warmth and becomes one of the living.

He leaves the underworld far behind him and joins Phineas.

Alive and free, he indulges in the pomegranate and dances with Phineas in the world of the ringmaster's design; color everywhere he turns, rich reds and golds and smiling faces distinct from each other and the surrounding homogeny looming outside, yet existing happily, content in their idiosyncrasies and _sui generis_.

There is no exertion of power to keep anyone in their place. 

No barriers.

No misery that swallows Phillip, Phineas, and every beautifully unique peculiarity in its dense, smothering fog.

Phillip is not the god of the dead. He is a simple _man;_ beaming like he's never going to stop in the arms of the man he loves who loves him, in return.

Beneath the synchronized steps traced by their nimble feet, the straw and sawdust lining the ring at the center of Phineas Barnum's world become sprigs of vivid green grass; emerging from the ground with the revival of spring.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, the title does come from _Frozen_ 's "Let It Go". I never said that I'm not lame.


End file.
